


the mighty fall

by soupmetaphors



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, M/M, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-19 05:09:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9420089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soupmetaphors/pseuds/soupmetaphors
Summary: Three boys walk into the desert and raise an empire from the ashes.





	1. Chapter 1

The sun is beating down across his back as he trips and stumbles, hands dusted with sand and blood.

“Tell them,” the man who once was Edward Sallow ordered him. “Tell them not to interfere, or there _will_ be consequences.”

Edward Sallow has bright eyes and a smile that tells you that he had everything under control; there is no need to worry if you just do as he says, right down to the letter. Edward Sallow has big plans, and everything will fall into place if you do this one small thing for him, why don’t you?

He wonders if the man has sent spies to follow him, to make sure he will do his final duty.

(At night, he swears he can see eyes in the darkness, watching as he sits by his fire and thinks of what went wrong.)

“Do this for me. As an old friend. As a brother.”

In the Boneyard, children play on metal skeletons and pretend they can touch the sky. In the Boneyard, they run barefoot through the streets, all bruised bodies and bloodied knuckles.

( _He cuts his hair before he leaves, and then Sallow’s. Those brown locks seem like snakes that touch the ground and seem to wriggle away before his very eyes._

_“We are not children anymore,” he tells Sallow. “Do you understand?”_

_Bright eyes. A smile that lights fires. “I understand.”_ )

In the Boneyard, words like _friend_ and _brother_ carry more weight than an overloaded Brahmin.

He is a good friend. The tribes capture them, and all he can think of is how easy it will be to smother Sallow in his sleep and spare him this madness, to tell the missionary to help him hold his brother down, while he chokes the very life out of him.

He is a good brother. Sallow reads books and occasionally points out unfamiliar words to him, words which he explains, gently deconstructing concepts into understandable theories.

“You are my greatest mistake,” Sallow told him, as he ran into the desert, scraping his knees on the sand, like a rabbit being pursued by hounds. “But I will repay you. I will.”

_Repay. How?_

With a knife to the back? With a slit throat, a winking eye across his flesh? He doesn’t want to think about the consequences.

“Tell them for me, will you, my friend?”

 _Of course. For you, anything._ Everything.

Except that one very important question.

( _“Join me,” Sallow says, and his eyes flick between him and the silent missionary, those blue eyes seeming to mock him._

_Make your choice. Make it. Make it here, loud, clear._

_“Join me. One last time.”_ )

Bill Calhoun runs across the stretch of Arizona, thinking of bright eyes and a fire that’s barely getting started.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> honestly, i love the notion of bill calhoun. he's one of the founders of the legion, and i'm pretty sad there's no in-game version of him. 
> 
> oh, and i do have a longer triumvirate fic planned. i don't know when i'll write it, but it's there.


	2. Chapter 2

Joshua Graham is a dead man’s name, and those cold blue eyes belong to a corpse somewhere along the Colorado River.

Here is a fact: Caesar’s most feared legate is a man with tight jeans and the ability to get shot six times without once ever slowing his stride.

Here is also a fact:

He plucks children from their mother’s breasts, and lets them watch their families, their tribes, go up in smoke. He takes boys and twists them into men, into bodies that will stain the desert floor red with their warm blood. He watches them grow into weapons, and teaches them that a faulty weapon is a weapon that will backfire at any time.

And faulty weapons are stripped from limb to limb, for even if it is broken, no part should be wasted. A man who can’t aim for the heart can never be a soldier. A man who has broken legs will now be a body with broken legs- And not just a body, but an _example_ that failure will not, and will _never,_ be tolerated.

Caesar visits him at night. Leaves dark marks on his neck, on his shoulders, makes him black and blue inside and out.

( _“I love you,” Caesar growls, as he kisses his right-hand man’s neck, sharp teeth on skin. “I love you.”_

Who do you love? _The Legate always wonders._ The man from New Canaan or the dog in your army? _The saint or the sinner, the Brutus to your quite literal Caesar-_ )

Joshua Graham is a dead man’s name, and the Malpais Legate wonders how long it will take everyone to stop attaching it to him: A corpse on his back, arms wound round and round his neck, unable to ever fully leave him.

( _Here is a man who kills children, who has taken babes and beaten their heads against rocks as their mothers scream and throw themselves at him, only to be met with his gun, only to be met with death._

 _Here is a man who holds Caesar with the same arms his uses to bring useless recruits down onto his knee, and relish the_ crack _that fills the air, the agonized cries cut short._ )

Here is a man who makes his camp by the river and thinks his baptism will turn the waters cherry wine red.


	3. Chapter 3

_Behold! A royal army,_   
_With banner, sword, and shield,_   
_Is marching forth to conquer_   
_On life’s great battlefield._

Graham used to sing that hymn, when the three of them were still prisoners of the tribes, caught in the crossfire of a war that was going nowhere fast. Used to sing it all the time, until the tune ingrained itself in his head, and then in his mouth.

Graham doesn’t sing any hymns anymore, and Caesar sure as hell doesn’t sing along with him, for old time’s sake.

He flips through books that smell of decay, careful not to let the pages crumble between his fingers. He draws diagrams on scraps of paper, carefully deciphers texts in a language long dead. He makes an army: First in his head, then out here in Arizona.

( _“I won’t join you,” Calhoun says, and it feels like a spear through his chest: To be betrayed by his oldest friend, his almost-brother. “For fuck’s sake, think rationally. This won’t work, Edward.”_

_Calhoun is a good friend, a good brother. And because Caesar is staring at the man who grew up right next to him, he does not lash out. Does not immediately order Graham to shoot him clean through the skull._

_“Go, then. And tell them not to interfere.”_

_Tell them Edward Sallow’s never coming home._ )

You don’t rise to power without letting go of the things you hold most. Sacrifice is key, and Caesar knows he needs to open the doors.

Read the books. Draw the diagrams. Structure your entire existence around a civilization deader than the pre-War America the ghouls know, and name yourself king. Send boys out into the desert with knives and tell them that they either capture the flag or end up hanging from two pieces of dead wood, dying slowly under the hot sun.

Use your bright eyes and look to the future, where red banners fly, where your legate actually does his goddamn job instead of-

Instead of-

 _Oh, for fuck’s sake_ , Caesar thinks, when he sees Graham and his men coming back from Boulder City.

Sacrifice is key. You trample bones underfoot to make sure you do not end up like them, and you water weeds to make sure they strangle your enemies when they come.

And sometimes, you need to throw away your gun and turn back to using knives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the hymn is called 'behold! a royal army', and is very real.


	4. Chapter 4

“Sacrifice is key, Joshua.”

They are lighting the torches, and pitch is slowly pooling towards Caesar’s feet.

“I can’t allow my men to think that even the highest rank among them does not suffer. For when one pillar fails, the whole palace comes tumbling down.”


	5. Chapter 5

His skin is on fire. His head is on fire, his thoughts, his words.

 _Blessed be those cleansed by God’s holy flame_ , he thinks, right before the pain hits, right before they push him off the edge of the Grand Canyon.

_Blessed be the warriors, that their righteous anger smite their enemies and bring forth-_

His thoughts dissolve into mindless screams.


	6. Chapter 6

The news of the Boulder City rolls in the same time Calhoun examines the denarius between his fingers, rusted with age.

On the back, immortalized in gold, three young men straight out of the desert. Three young men he will never see again, not even when he looks in the mirror.

 _Magnum chasma,_ he thinks, as he brings the revolver up with his other hand, the barrel cold against the side of his head. _Great divide._

The gunshot is loud, deafening in the afternoon’s silence.

 


End file.
